Northumberland is low and flat near the North Sea coast and increasingly mountainous toward the northwest. Canterbury, the city, is in East Kent. Kent is the south easternmost county in England. It is bounded on the north by the River Thames and the North Sea, and on the south by the Straits of Dover and the English Channel. The name Cromer possibly dates back to the 9th century at the time of the Danish conquest in the form of Kroemmer and covers East Anglia. The charter of King John (1208), which gave his burgesses of Yarmouth general liberties according to the customs of Oxford, a gild merchant and weekly hustings, was amplified by several later charters asserting the rights of the borough against Little Yarmouth and Gorleston. THE FENS are an area of former wetlands in the counties of Cambridgeshire, Lincolnshire and Norfolk in eastern England. The region lies west and south of THE WASH. Geologically, the fenlands are a silted-up bay of the North Sea that embraces the lower drainage basins of the rivers Witham, Welland, Nene and Great Ouse. Indeed the name Northumbria simply indicates the area North of the Humber. It currently forms the boundary between the East Riding of Yorkshire, to the north and North and North East Lincolnshire, to the south. The Firth of Forth (Abhainn Dhubh [Black River] in Scottish Gaelic) is the estuary or firth of Scotland's River Forth, where it flows into the North Sea between Fife to the north, and West Lothian, the City of Edinburgh, and East Lothian to the south. The river is tidal as far inland as Stirling. The term West Riding usually refers to the West Riding of Yorkshire.
Formerly the term Hebrides or Western Isles was held to embrace not only all the islands off the Scottish western coast, including the islands in the Firth of Clyde. At certain times the Kingdom became a domain to the Kings of Dublin and Man and passing through Cumberland and the territory of the Strath-Clyde Britons it even reached to the eastern parts of Britain, where it met with another current from the North, that of the Danes and Kings of Jorvik (York.) The first King of Man here mentioned, viz. Godred Crovan son of Sytric. In 852, Olaf the White, the Ainhlabh of the Irish chronicles, descended from the same family as Harold Harfagri, the Fair-Haired, afterwards King of Norway, conquered Dublin, with the adjacent territory, and founded this, the most renowned, most powerful and most lasting Norwegian kingdom in Ireland. Olaf Cwaran (d. 981) the King of Dublin, was also known as Olaf Sihtricson and succeeded Olaf III Guthfrithson. Sigtrygg Caech, Olaf's father, ruled Deira, a part of Northumbria, until his death in 927. The entry in Chronicle is an abridgment from that in Chron. de Mailros, where it is expressly stated that Somerled had rebelled against King Malcolm for twelve years. Among the Northumbrian kings named in the so-called Chronicon Saxonicum, and by the old English annalists, we find several among the Western Isles who are said to have arrived from Ireland, and whom, indeed, we find in the Irish chronicles as kings of Dublin. As for the Orkneys, Shetland and the Faereys, their proximity to Norway makes it more likely that they were peopled immediately from this country than by Norsemen previously settled in the Western Islands.
After the Norman Conquest William the Conqueror tried to rule England using the traditional system but eventually modified it to his own liking. -Shire became the largest secular subdivision in England and earldoms disappeared. In a few cases the earl was traditionally addressed by his family name; Thus an earl did not always have an intimate association with "his" county. Another example comes from the earls of Oxford, whose property largely lay in Essex. They became earls of Oxford because earls of Essex and of the other nearby shires already existed but some major earldoms in Scotland originated from the office of mormaer. The ruler of the Norwegian dependancy of Orkney held the title of jarl, and after Iceland had acknowledged Norwegian overlordship in 1261, a jarl was sent there as well as the king's high representative. Since an Earl or Jarl was an Anglo-Saxon and Scandinavian title, meaning chieftain and it referred especially to chieftains set to rule a territory in a king's stead.
The Mormaer or Mormaerdom of Ross refers to a medieval Gaelic lordship in northern Scotland, roughly between the Oykell and the Beauly. It was probably confined entirely to Easter Ross to an area between the Dornoch Firth and the Cromarty Firth, i.e. the Tarbet peninsula the and the parishes of Kiltearn (modern EVANTON or Baile Eòghainn in Gaelic) and Alness and north-west of Dingwall. There had been a settlement, an old ferm toun known as Drummond (Drumainn), near the location of Evanton, and several lordly residences, such as Foulis, Novar and Balconie Castle. The River Sgitheach flows from the mountains of inland Ross and is complemented by numerous other streams until it passes several waterfalls before flowing past the southern end of the village, and the northern end of the old settlement of Drummond, into the Cromatry Firth about 1 km from the mouth of the Allt Graad. The town of Dingwall once boasted a small castle, the birthplace of Macbeth. King Alexander II created Dingwall a royal burgh in 1226, and James IV renewed its charter. The 'Old Orchard' is the reconstructed garden surrounding Cromarty's oldest inhabited dwelling house (circa 1690). In the early 1770s George Ross, the laird who built Cromarty House from the ruins of Cromarty Castle, constructed the 3m high wall that now forms the principle boundary of the modern garden.
Ross is a historical comital region, perhaps predating the Mormaerdom of Ross in which a lordship between the Oykell and Beauly- some of Black isle peninsula but confined to Easter Ross and an area between Dornoch firth and Cromarty Firth, such as the Tarbet peninsula, through the parishes Kiltearn (Evanton) and a division of Alness by parishes Alness and Rosskeen by the river Averon. Fortriu - Moray is the name for an ancient Pictish kingdom located around Moray and Easter Ross in northern Scotland apart from the continental Pictavium during a Roman Franconia period. It did not have the same territory as the modern district of Moray, the territory of which has contracted to a small territory around Elgin. This medieval lordship was in fact centered both the lower Spey valley and around Inverness and the northern parts of the Great Glen, and probably originally included Buchan and Mar, as well as Ross. This medieval lordship was in fact centered both the lower Spey valley and around Inverness and the northern parts of the Great Glen, and probably originally included Buchan and Mar, as well as Ross. The Cenél Baodan, or MacLeans (Mac Giolla Eoin) descend from Baodan, great-grandson of Loarn, king of Dal Riada. The clan was originally settled in Morvern, where they gave their name to a district, and one of their early ancestors was abbot of the nearby Isle of Lismore. In later times they migrated up the Great Glen into Moray, and later still, about 1160, they were one of several clans transferred to the Scone area (Tayside in Perthshire) by Malcolm IV the Maiden. Their eponymous ancestor was Gillean (Giolla Eoin) of the Battleaxe, who lived during the reign of Alexander III (1249—1283), and fought at the Battle of Largs in 1263.